Victor Wembanyama has consistently been the San Antonio Spurs’ saving grace in what is steadily turning into a tumultuous season. As the Spurs keep on racking loss after loss, Wemby has gotten into the habit of racking up unreal-looking plays that he makes look effortless. His latest, a dunk over Derrick White which he eventually threatened to finger-roll against the Boston Celtics, brought up comparisons with an NBA legend, Larry Nance.
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Nance, a 3-time All-Star, was also known for his lanky style of play, and once produced a similar dunk that initially looked like it would be a layup. However, he appeared to change his mind in the last second and rolled his wrist to come up with a spectacular dunk instead.
That was exactly what Victor Wembanyama did against the Celtics. Wembanyama trotted towards the paint with Derrick White in hot pursuit. He seemed initially hesitant to dunk the ball. But White eventually pulled away, avoiding what would surely have been a useless act, considering the size and length advantage that the 20-year-old possesses, over basically everyone in the NBA.
Regardless, Wemby also ended up rolling his wrist and instead chose a simple dunk, which looked almost impossible to pull off. Fans quickly highlighted the similarities between the two shots, with NBA Cobwebs posting the video of the Larry Nance dunk.
While the play by Wembanyama further illustrated his superhuman abilities, it came in a whopping 33-point, 134-101 loss against the Boston Celtics. Wembanyama scored 21 points despite only playing 24 minutes and saw his teams stumble to their 27th defeat of the season.
This has been the case for Spurs for almost every game this season, where despite the Frenchman’s effort, the team ended up losing the game. Gregg Popovich’s team has only managed to win 2 games in December out of 15 played.
Victor Wembanyama has struggled to win games for his team
The San Antonio Spurs undoubtedly have a potentially generational player on their side in the form of Victor Wembanyama. The 20-year-old has averaged 18.9 points, 10.3 rebounds, 3 assists, 3.1 blocks and 1.3 steals per game this season.
Those are numbers that can make any player proud. However, the Spurs have still struggled to win games, which is especially down to their inability to make full use of Wemby’s talents.
The player, despite playing on a 5-27 team, is producing utterly impressive numbers and has a decent shooting efficiency of 48.8%. Being the frontrunner alongside Chet Holmgren for the ROTY race, Wembanyama is still learning how to win games for his team, let alone consistently. Once he does that, and the Spurs are able to build a team capable of servicing his skills, they are bound to improve.
